I want to internally rewrite one request to another and modify the REQUEST_URI. The problem is that in my rewritten request, the REQUEST_URI php sees is still the original one. I see that there is a SERVER['REDIRECT_REDIRECT_REQUEST_URI'] that gets created with the code I've pasted below. How can I formulate a rewrite rule that properly *changes* the request_uri value?

In .htaccess files (i am not sure about other places like <VirtualHost>s) all environmental variables you create are prefixed with REDIRECT_. This is either a "security" feature so you don't change things that will break Apache's processing or because a sub-request is made for the new URL. Or possible both.

The best you can hope for is REDIRECT_REQUEST_URI. You should be able to achieve that with